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From the signaling theory perspective, the current study explores various drivers of brand transparency and its effect on users' interactions with food delivery apps.

First, a set of precursors of brand transparency of food delivery apps from focus group discussions was identified. Next, an integrated model tests the impact of brand transparency, perceived risk and brand trust on users' ordering frequency. Data collected from 522 users were analyzed using the partial least squares structural equation modeling method.

The outcomes showed the effectiveness of brand communications as the strongest indicator of brand transparency. Moreover, brand transparency favorably influences users' brand trust and ordering intention and negatively influences perceived risk. Hygiene rating attenuates the adverse effects of perceived risk.

The current study is a pioneering attempt that offers ways for online food delivery providers to build brand transparency, lessen users' risk perceptions and foster greater use of apps in the post-pandemic scenario.

This study aims to understand the effects of brands’ transparent communication (i.e. production transparency and cost transparency) on consumers’ perceptions of a brand’s perceived transparency and authenticity, as well as how such perceptions impact consumers’ attitude, trust and behavioral intentions.

Two between-participants factorial design experiments (n = 176 for Study 1 and n = 169 for Study 2) were conducted to examine consumers’ responses to a brand’s cost transparency and production transparency.

The results revealed that transparency in the focal brand’s communication of production and cost would increase consumers’ perceptions of the brand’s transparency and authenticity because of its perceived information sensitivity. Such positive effects were found to similarly impact consumers’ attitude, trust and behavioral intention toward the brand.

The results point to the importance of brand transparency in marketing communication, specifically as it pertains to the influence that the inclusion of transparent cost and production information can have on consumers’ perceptions of authenticity, trust and attitude, as well as how these perceptions translate into behavioral intention.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is among the first to explore the differences between production transparency and cost transparency in influencing consumer responses and the underlying mechanisms. The findings also expand to the literature on brand transparency and brand authenticity.

The purpose of this quantitative study is to identify disclosure strategies for transparency in sustainability reporting to support strategic thinking around transparency in the fashion industry. This research has two specific research objectives: to capture progress towards greater transparency across sustainability reporting areas, across fashion brands and years, and to identify strategic approaches for transparency in sustainability reporting by revealing common patterns in business disclosure.

The authors cross-sectionally analyzed secondary data using four consecutive Fashion Transparency Indices (2017–2020). Brands' strategies for transparency in sustainability reporting were examined through the stakeholder theory lens.

Findings confirm the presence of four approaches to disclosure: measurable, ambiguous, policy-only and secretive strategy. The disclosure was disproportionally distributed between 30% brands as transparency leaders and 70% brands as transparency laggards. The most transparent brands were not necessarily those rated highest by the index but those whose progress toward transparency was traceable over the years.

The study has overcome the limitation of the verifiability approach, supporting the requirement for diachronic and strategic disclosure assessments.

As most brands hesitantly disclose sustainability information, stakeholders cannot know whether business policies equate to more than a corporate wish list. If there is no inspection for mandatory business disclosure, and if there is no penalty for disclosure violations, some fashion retailers will continue to generate profits while operating in an uncompliant and “opaque” manner.

The framing of disclosure strategies for transparency in sustainability reporting is the first scholarly effort to investigate diachronically sustainability disclosure among a big sample of major fashion brands.

Few studies have explored how to foster green customer citizenship behavior. Therefore, the aim of this study was to understand the factors influencing green customer citizenship behavior in a restaurant context.

This study proposes a conceptual model, based on previous studies, hypothesizing that green attributes transparency engenders green brand image and green trust, which together facilitate green customer citizenship behavior. The authors used structural equations modeling with data collected from 312 consumers in Taiwan to do the analysis.

The findings indicate that green attributes transparency plays a strong role in determining green brand image and green trust, which enhance green customer citizenship behavior. Managerial implications to aid businesses in developing strategies to enhance their ability to foster green citizenship behavior among its consumers for competitive advantage is also provided, together with an outline of the limitations of the study.

This study used the concept of stimulus–organism–response to test the stimuli of green attributes transparency to enhance customer citizenship behavior mediated by green brand image and green trust. This study makes two theoretical contributions. First, this study extended the concept of attributes transparency, brand image, trust and customer citizenship behavior to a green context. The authors developed a research framework and confirmed that green attributes transparency facilitate green brand image and green trust, which contribute to green customer citizenship behavior. Second, there is no prior study exploring the relationship between green attributes transparency, green brand image, green trust and green customer citizenship behavior. The empirical support for the model developed in this study is based on empirical data of Taiwan restaurant consumers.

Fashion brands are under heavy criticism for often exhibiting poor working conditions and producing environmental damage. Pressure comes from initiatives such as Fashion Transparency Index (FTI) by Fashion Revolution to assess fashion brands' transparency based on information publicly disclosed. But an understanding of how such movements reflect in a Global South country characterised by institutional voids is still absent.

While the FTI ranks individual brands, in this study the authors have analysed 305 documents extracted from the websites of 20 Brazilian fashion brands to unpack practices and re-bundle them according to three archetypes – opaque, translucent and transparent – that display a maturity curve.

The authors show that advancement is heterogeneous, and we complement previous research exposing the limits of an NGO in driving transparency by investigating a context embedded in institutional voids. The authors show that most fashion brands restrict transparency to tier-1 suppliers. Moreover, although fashion brands increasingly demand disclosure from their suppliers, they do not clarify their own purchasing practices such as cancellation and payment policies. On the positive note, the authors show that maturity for transparent brands can include the actionability concept by engaging with consumer via surveys and educative content.

The authors contribute to theory by offering a maturity curve of fashion supply chain transparency. The authors contribute to practice by offering the three archetypes – opaque, translucent and transparent. This study unveils heterogeneity and asymmetry between the levels of transparency that buying firms demand from their suppliers against what they provide about their own practices.

The purpose of this paper is to examine consumer involvement with a popular US-based coffee-shop brand consumer-generated advertising (CGA) and its effect on brand loyalty and trust, to test the influence of antecedents: organizational transparency and brand authenticity on CGA involvement, and to analyze differences among customers and non-customers of the brand.

Grounded in the service-dominant logic and signaling theory, a scenario-based survey describing a contest to co-create a video commercial, as CGA, for a prominent US-based coffee-shop brand, yielded 492 responses from recent restaurant patrons. Structural equation modeling was used to test the effects of involvement in CGA on loyalty and trust. Multi-group comparison examined the differences between customers and non-customers of the brand.

Involvement in CGA had positive effects on loyalty and trust for both brand customers and non-customers. Transparency builds perceptions of brand authenticity; both authenticity and transparency significantly and positively affected trust, but only authenticity influenced loyalty. There was a stronger impact of involvement with CGA on loyalty for non-customers than brand customers. Non-customer perceptions of the brand’s authenticity influenced brand trust more significantly than customer perceptions.

Coffee-shop brand marketers should leverage online and physical brand exposure to involve both customers and non-customers in company-driven CGA, as a relationship management and marketing tool. Marketers should enhance transparency, which builds perceptions of brand authenticity, leading to greater CGA involvement.

This study contributes to hospitality research and literature, revealing that non-customers can be converted to brand customers through authenticity and indirect involvement with CGA, leading to long-term relational outcomes. The results identified consumers’ perception of organizational transparency is an antecedent of brand authenticity and established CGA contests as a relational marketing tool for hospitality brands.

To help brands persuasively communicate their environmentally responsible initiatives, this study aims to involve two experiments, examining the impact of brand schema, information transparency and skepticism toward climate change for brands both familiar and unfamiliar to US consumers.

Two online experiments were designed recruiting a total of 510 participants. The design incorporates both message and treatment variance to increase internal and external validity of the study. Data collected were analyzed using PROCESS, a regression-based conditional path analysis technique.

The results indicated that for both familiar and unfamiliar brands, increased congruity of consumers' schemas to information presented in brands' pro-environmental messages led consumers to evaluate the messages as more persuasive, have more positive opinions about brands' environmentally responsible initiatives as well as behavioral intentions toward the brand. Also, presence of high information transparency on environmental responsibility-related messages influenced consumers' schemas positively, and in turn, their evaluations were more favorable. However, consumers’ climate change skepticism seemed to influence unfamiliar, not familiar brands.

The study provides both theoretical and managerial implications. The findings are important for established apparel brands that suffer from negative reputations, but are willing to revitalize their images, and for new ventures who want to establish their image as environmentally responsible.

This research aims to examine the influence of brand signals (transparency, innovativeness and reputation) on brand trust and price fairness toward organic food restaurant brand.

The empirical data were gathered with the survey instrument from respondents who had previously visited organic food restaurant. The formulated hypotheses were analyzed with structural equation modeling.

The collected data demonstrated the positive effect of brand signals on brand trust and price fairness. Trust in organic food restaurant brand was found to positively impact both price fairness and brand loyalty. Additionally, the results provided evidence of the positive linkage between price fairness and brand loyalty. Among brand signals, brand transparency exerted the greatest impact on brand trust and price fairness. The findings also indicated the significant indirect linkage of brand signals on restaurant brand loyalty through brand trust and price fairness.

Through the lens of signaling theory and equity theory, this study provides novel insights into how brand signals contribute to brand trust, price fairness and organic food restaurant brand loyalty. The managerial implications for implementing brand strategies for organic food restaurants were discussed.

With the development of tourism industry, online travel agencies (OTA) have gradually become an important channel for tourism product supplies and sales. Some OTAs provide consumers with a platform for tourism guidance and online travel sharing. They not only satisfy some tourists’ desire to share their experiences but also provide reference for more consumers to choose travel products. This process is the process of value co-creation by customers and online travel companies. This study is conducted under DART theory, a theoretical framework of value co-creation composed of four dimensions, namely dialog, access, risk-assessment, and transparency. Brand equity is divided into four aspects: brand loyalty, brand awareness, customer perceived value, and brand image. This study uses the structural equation model to investigate the impact of customer value co-creation behavior on brand equity of online travel enterprises and interprets the process and mechanism of customer value co-creation behaviors for online travel business brand equity, which provides more efficient strategies and methods for platform interaction and value co-creation.

The purpose of this paper is to trace developments in the fashion business commitment to sustainability over two decades and identify the drivers that progressively changed fashion brands’ perspective on sustainable supply chain management.

The research methodology is in the lines of Donald Schon reflective practice. Reflection-on-action is based on one of the authors practice in consultancy to fashion companies and in dialog with NGOs. The professional experience has been reconsidered through the analysis of the literature on sustainability initiatives and review of case histories.

The time span considered captures fashion brands sustainability awareness in its statu nascenti (nascent state) revealing a trial and error process that led to progressive refinements of both means and ends. Change drivers identified are: go beyond monitoring, adopt a comprehensive approach, look beyond first tier of suppliers, integrate sustainability to core business practices and bring transparency to the supply chain.

Existing literature surveys show that authors used to focus on specific issues and concentrate on individual case studies, under-representing the complex set of factors that companies, institutions and NGOs address, including the effect of past decisions, successes and mistakes. The paper is a first step to fill the gap and provides an up-to-date overview of current developments aimed at both scholars and practitioners, especially CSR and marketing managers and NGOs campaigners.